Cleo's Mom

I have a following? :thumbup: Who knew? But I promise as the "head shepherd" I will not lead you to slaughter but on the path of rightness, truth and the american way.

You always stick up for the rich and bash the poor, characterizing the latter as just wanting the government handouts while the former does the same thing. But I digress. I support small businesses and their start up. But you always make it sound like the private sector is so independent and does everything on their own - owing only to the hard work of the person who started the business, but read on: Entrepreneurs may feel pinch with aid cuts In bad economy, state help for entrepreneurs faces cuts Sunday, June 06, 2010 By Jon Offredo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Nationally, the recession produced a surge in entrepreneurial activity last year with new business creation hitting the highest levels in 14 years as some people who lost their jobs decided to go out on their own. But in Pennsylvania, which came in third-to-last in a Kauffman Index entrepreneurial ranking, small business advocates worry that huge cuts in funding for key programs that helped nurture those new ventures may mean fewer startups will get off the ground. "That's the irony we're facing," said Christian Conroy, state director of the Small Business Development Center. "[it's been] one of the worst economies in the country, especially in Pennsylvania ... the demand for our services is in more need now than ever before." During last year's budget crisis, funding for the Small Business Development Center was cut to $3.6 million, down 55 percent from the all-time high of $8 million in 2006. "If we can't get the state funding restored to $5.5 million for the fiscal year in July, I'm not sure we'll be able to sustain the existing infrastructure we currently have," Mr. Conroy said. Programs such as those offered by the development center have helped returning Pittsburghers like Matthew Rodgers and Marc Cipullo form business plans and kick-start their companies. Despite such stories, the programs may fall victim to the economic downturn they have helped others to weather. Determination despite cuts Supporters of the small business programs haven't given up. With budgetary discussions coming up and the state facing another shortfall, Mr. Conroy and local caucuses have written letters to the state Senate Appropriations Committee and the state Chamber of Commerce. "I don't envy the folks in Harrisburg. They had some incredibly difficult decisions to make," Mr. Conroy said. He said supporters also are exploring the possibility of seeking up to $7 million in federal funding, but that would require matching grants from the state. What's that? State and federal funding for private business start up - and they are asking for it. Say it isn't so. I though they didn't want any help from the government. They wanted to go it alone. No handouts. Hmmm.

Originally Posted by Cleo's Mom Teachers pay into their pension/retirement funds with their money too. Yeah, the money that the rest of us gave them to do their job. You didn't "give" them anything. They earned it. How elitist of you. And by that standard, I give you your money at the nursing home, much of which comes from federal taxes for medicare & medicaid. You have such a superior attitude over other people, their plights, their professions, and how you live your life. You think you are so independent - you don't need or want any government help. That is such an immature position and very far from the truth. No it isn't. Why do you find it so hard to believe that there are people out there who actually desire to fend for themselves? When you do it yourself and work hard to get ahead, there comes a sence of pride, a sense of wellness. There is a big difference in the way a person feels about their car when they worked and saved to pay for it themselves over when they received it as a gift from mom and dad. There is a sense of accomplishment and joy when you are independent. And this comes from being independent of the government as well. You are not independent of the government. From the first lightswitch you turn on, to the clean water that comes out of your faucet, to the food you eat, the medication you take, the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the highways you drive on, the safety at your workplace to the wages you receive, those are all affected by the government that you love to bash and from whom you think you are so independent. So immature.

Spanking toddlers leads to aggressive behavior When it comes to disciplining toddlers, spanking doesn't work and it can even make them more aggressive later on, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers at Tulane University studied about 2,500 3-year-olds and found that children whose mothers spanked them more than twice in a month were more likely to show higher levels of aggression by the time they turned 5. Researchers said they controlled for the child's initial aggression levels and issues that increase the risk that a child will act aggressively, such as a mother's depression, substance abuse and intimate partner violence. The study underscores similar findings in other research and is in line with a long held position by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends against corporal punishment. Instead, the group advises parents to consider "time outs" and withholding privileges as more effective ways to discipline a child. Just another research study for you to ignore. Probably done by some liberal, commie, socialist, gay group who supports government handouts and people marrying pets.

You're a poet and didn't even know it. I might be able to help with a coupon for Purina puppy chow.

Which means that making it illegal won't stop them. Just punish them, which is what I have been saying is what it's all about for you.

That's different than your saying everyone is born with nothing. And people who are born into money don't have to work for it, like everyone else. The following illustrates how neocons and republicans allow the rich to get richer while the rest have to pick up the slack - the middle class has had declining earning power for years and it's the fault of the conservative, help the rich get richer agenda of the republicans. ONLY ESTATES worth more than $1.5 million are taxed. That’s less than 1% of all estates. Still, repealing the estate tax will cost the government at least $55 billion a year. ONLY 3% OF STUDENTS at the top 146 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile; only 10% come from the bottom half. BUSH’S TAX CUTS GIVE a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722—or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids. A 2-CHILD family earning $50,000 gets $2,050—or 1/5 the cost of public college for one kid. THIS YEAR, Donald Trump will earn $1.5 million an hour to speak at Learning Annex seminars. ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION, the federal minimum wage has fallen 42% since its peak in 1968. IF THE $5.15 HOURLY minimum wage had risen at the same rate as CEO compensation since 1990, it would now stand at $23.03. A MINIMUM WAGE employee who works 40 hours a week for 51 weeks a year goes home with $10,506 before taxes. SUCH A WORKER would take 7,000 years to earn Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s yearly compensation. ELLISON RECENTLY posed in Vanity Fair with his $300 million, 454-foot yacht, which he noted is “really only the size of a very large house.” ONLY THE WEALTHIEST 20% of Americans spend more on entertainment than on health care. THE $17,530 EARNED by the average Wal-Mart employee last year was $1,820 below the poverty line for a family of 4. 5 OF AMERICA’S 10 richest people are Wal-Mart heirs. PUBLIC COMPANIES spend 10% of their earnings compensating their top 5 executives. 1,730 BOARD MEMBERS of the nation’s 1,000 leading companies sit on the boards of 4 or more other corporations—including half of Coca-Cola’s 14-person board. THE BIDDER who won a round of golf with Tiger Woods for $30,100 at a 2004 Buick charity auction could deduct all but about $200. TIGER MADE $87 million in 2005, all but $12 million from endorsements and appearance fees. THE 5TH LEADING philanthropist last year was Boone Pickens, in part due to his $165 million gift to Oklahoma State University’s golf program. WITHIN AN HOUR, OSU invested it in a hedge fund Pickens controls. Thanks to a Katrina relief provision, his “gift” was also 100% deductible. LAST YEAR 250 COMPANIES gave top execs between $50,000 and $1 million worth of wholly personal flights on corporate jets. THIS PERK is 66% more costly to companies whose CEO belongs to out-of-state golf clubs. THE U.S. GOVERNMENT spends $500,000 on 8 security screeners who speed execs from a Wall Street helipad to American’s JFK terminal. UNITED HAS CUT the pensions and salaries of most employees but promised 400 top executives 8% of the shares it expects to issue upon emerging from bankruptcy. UNITED’S TOP 8 execs will also get a bonus of between 55% and 100% of their salaries. IN 2002, “turnaround artist” Robert Miller dumped Bethlehem Steel’s pension obligation, allowing “vulture investor” Wilbur L. Ross to buy steel stock and sell it at a 1,000% profit. IN 2005, DELPHI HIRED Miller for $4.5 million. After Ross said he might buy Delphi if its labor costs fell, Miller demanded wage cuts of up to 63% and dumped the pension obligation. 10 FORMER ENRON directors agreed to pay shareholders a $13 million settlement—which is 10% of what they made by dumping stock while lying about the company’s health. POOR AMERICANS spend 1/4 of their income on residential energy costs. EXXON’S 2005 PROFIT of $36.13 billion is more than the GDP of 2/3 of the world’s nations. CEO PAY AMONG military contractors has tripled since 2001. For David Brooks, the CEO of bulletproof vest maker DHB, it’s risen 13,233%. We all pay for this in one way or another. Don't think it's just private money. It's corporate welfare in many cases. And it's obscene. And it's unfair, and that's the problem I have with the rich.

You are NOT independent from the government. It touches your life in every way every day. If it didn't you'd be living in a cave, but in a symbolic way you already are.

Are the 30 patients under your constant visual supervision for your entire shift?

It seems like your solution to every discipline problem is spanking. Very sad.

How about if we slash the bloated military budget by the amount needed to provide free birth control?

Here's what he said: Health Costs and the Federal Budget On Wednesday I spoke at a conference on the health care system hosted by the Institute of Medicine. My presentation dealt with health care costs and the federal budget. The central challenge is straightforward and stark: The rising costs of health care will put tremendous pressure on the federal budget during the next few decades and beyond. In CBO’s judgment, the health legislation enacted earlier this year does not substantially diminish that pressure. In fact, CBO estimated that the health legislation will increase the federal budgetary commitment to health care (which CBO defines as the sum of net federal outlays for health programs and tax preferences for health care) by nearly $400 billion during the 2010-2019 period. Looking further ahead, CBO estimated that the legislation would reduce the federal budgetary commitment to health care in the following decade—if the provisions of the legislation remain unchanged throughout that entire period. CBO also estimated that the legislation will reduce budget deficits by about $140 billion during the 2010-2019 period and by an amount in a broad range around one-half percent of gross domestic product (GDP) during the following decade—again, under the assumption that the legislation remains in force as enacted. The projected reductions in budget deficits and in the federal budgetary commitment to health care during the decade beyond the 10-year budget window are steps in the direction of sustainable fiscal policy. However, they are small steps relative to the length of the journey that will be needed to achieve sustainability. If the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are extended, (not if I or other liberal democrats have anything to say about it, which we do) the alternative minimum tax is indexed for inflation, and no other changes are made to current laws regarding taxes and spending, the budget deficit in 2020 would be about 6 percent of GDP and rising. Because federal health care programs make up a large share of the federal budget, putting that budget on a sustainable path would almost certainly require a significant reduction in the growth of federal spending on health care relative to the amounts projected under current law (including this year’s health legislation). In considering the opportunities for achieving that reduction in spending growth, there are grounds for both optimism and pessimism. On the upside, there is considerable agreement that a substantial share of current spending on health care contributes little if anything to people’s health, and providers and health analysts are making significant efforts to make the health system more efficient. On the downside, it is not clear what specific policies the federal government can adopt to generate fundamental changes in the health system; that is, it is not clear what specific policies would translate the potential for significant cost savings into reality. Moreover, efforts to reduce costs substantially would increase the risk that people would not get some health care they need or would like to receive. If we had passed a public option there would be considerable savings. So, I don't see anything in here to support your "in your face" posts about the cost of healthcare from the CBO director. Just another neocon hypocrite who cherry picks intelligence, oops, I mean data. And btw - it's your federal government that you depend on for your very being, if I do.

Most of the wealthy in this country got that way from investments and the low taxes they pay on them not hard work.

A lot of parents drop their kids off in kindergarten and pick them up 13 years later at graduation. Those that do become "involved" are often those who complain about the teacher and/or defend their child from any criticism (behavior or academic). Teachers should be held accountable for teaching and children should be held accountable for learning and there are parents that support this, but sadly, in my experience they are in the minority. They don't support homework, they don't support consequences for misbehavior, they think their child does no wrong. I can go into a store and by seeing parents interact with their children tell you in which families the kids run the show. The parent asking the whining child which treat he wants... not this one? No, whines the child...how about this one? No, I want that one.. the whining child says. This is not a parent that will support the teacher or education. Parents are afraid of their kids and administrators are afraid of the parents. I found this to be a huge problem in my teaching experience.

More hypocrisy from the extremists on the right: Womb watch Katha Pollitt in The Nation notes that Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul is quite the libertarian except when it comes to abortion rights: "Women can forget about the 'privacy' and 'liberty' Paul touts on his website; Warnings against government encroachment on freedom do not apply to female citizens of Paul's back-to-basics Republic. As per his website, we get the Human Life amendment banning all abortion even for rape and incest, 'a Sanctity of Life Amendment, establishing the principle that life begins at conception,' a funding ban on Planned Parenthood and a ban on the Supreme Court taking up abortion-related cases. "As with many of Paul's statements and positions, you wonder if he's thought about them for more than two minutes. How, after all, is a ban on abortion to be implemented except by a massive government intrusion into private and personal behavior? To say nothing of monitoring thousands of medical practices, clinics, hospitals and pharmacies -- apparently the only businesses Paul would want to put under government oversight." Rand Paul wants to amend the 14th amendment. He wants to dictate what cases the supreme court takes. This is VERY DANGEROUS thinking and should be rejected by all those who say they care about our constitution. But if we're going to be changing amendments to the constitution and the teabaggers, libertarians, anti-immigration, and neocons are all for it, then I propose we start with the second to limit gun ownership to law enforcement and the military. I think I just heard Charleton Heston rolling over in his grave. LOL.

If Teachers Were Paid Like Babysitters… by Lisa on March 21st, 2008 We came recently came across a blog by a soon-to-be first-year teacher who was making the point that, despite complaints to the contrary, teachers are NOT overpaid. (Not sure who he’s been talking to, since we rarely hear that claim!)Obviously not talking to pattygreen and her ilk. Nonetheless, here’s what he says he would make if teachers were paid like babysitters. He starts by saying that all of this will be based on the average babysitter rate of $5/hour. Note: The national average for babysitting is actually $10-12/hour for college-age babysitters. Check out our Rate Calculator to get a much more specific idea about what babysitters in your neighborhood are actually making. Teacher wage per hour: $5 per hour for each student. Average number of students per class: 22. Average number of hours per day a teacher works: 7 hours. Average number of days per year a teacher works: 180 The blogger continues… 22 students at $5 per hour = $110 per hour. $110 per hour multiplied 7 hours a day = $770 per day. $770 per day multiplied 180 days a year = $138,600. He also argues that on top of this, most teachers put in an extra “three to four hours a day preparing, assessing, tutoring and participating in extracurricular events to ensure the success of their students.” Based on that, plus the fact that the average rate of babysitters is around $10/hour, his calculator should actually be well more than doubled… in the high $300,000s. How’s THAT for a starting salary?

Teachers pay into their pension/retirement funds with their money too. You have such a superior attitude over other people, their plights, their professions, and how you live your life. You think you are so independent - you don't need or want any government help. That is such an immature position and very far from the truth. What the government has done for americans touches your life everyday from the moment you wake up and turn on a light, to driving on the highway, to taking your meds, drinking your Water, eating your food and the place you work. You are seriously delusional when you smugly suggest you are so independent. And why would paying into social security and a retirement plan make "liberals" dependent slugs? Let's see how far the "privatizing social security" plan the republicans toss out every so often gets this election year. Who supports that? Not the american people. I guess they're all liberal dependent slugs!! LOL

The laws we have about murder, rape, stealing, etc.. aren't meant as a deterrent. People with no morals or conscience will still commit crimes. The laws are made to mete out punishments for committing crimes. People will continue to have abortions even if they're made illegal. Those who find it immoral don't need a law against it. The only difference will be the punishment end of it which is what you support. The liberal's philosophy is that equal rights under the law shouldn't be denied to you because of your sexual orientation. I haven't heard any liberal say that they want to make marriage between people and animals or relatives legal. That's just another neocon inflammatory comment. Typical when they can't argue otherwise :thumbup:

Once again, you ignored my post about the research that showed that making birth control free reduces abortion. If your REAL goal was to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and therefore abortions, you would want to do everything possible for that to happen. You would support government subsidies for free birth control because you would say "You can't put a price on saving even one baby so if providing free birth control would save even one life, it would be worth it." Now that would be the attitude of someone whose MAIN concern was the life of the fetus. However, for someone whose main concern is punishment then their attitude would be: "Why should I pay for someone else's birth control. They need to be responsible. Give up that pizza and make a trip to the drugstore." See the difference? I made it succinct so you wouldn't have to strain your eyes to read it.

That's right, just ignore all the proof I posted concerning the cost of healthcare while continuing to post your lies. :thumbup: I wouldn't care if the healthcare cost would not be totally paid for as currently presented. Let those unnecessary tax cuts to the rich expire at the end of the year to help with the cost of things and help reduce the deficit. What's that sound I hear? Why it's the conservatives, teabaggers and elected republicans howling about that possibility. Standing up for the rich, as usual.

What a hypocrite!!! Time and time again on these boards you have dismissed anything the CBO has published concerning scoring the healthcare bill. You rolled your eyes, called them just another government agency, blah, blah, blah and mocked those who believed them. Now you want to quote them? No, you don't get to do that. I am mocking you for being a hypocrite. :thumbup:

And conservatives have problems being truthful as to why they are against the things they're against. It has nothing to do with morality or reducing abortions and thus "saving babies", it's all about retribution, punishment, throw them all in jail mentality.

Report Shows Health Reform Will Reduce Health Care Spending By Nearly $600 Billion While Improving Access To Care For 32 Million Uninsured The Center for American Progress and The Commonwealth Fund released a report today that details the effects of the health reform law passed in March. The report, "The Impact of Health Reform on Health System Spending," concludes that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010's significant payment and system reform provisions will begin to realign health care system incentives and reduce cost growth far in excess of that predicted by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of the Actuary within the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The report projects the new law's effects on total national health expenditures and the insurance premiums families are likely to pay. Most assessments of the law have focused only on how it will affect the federal budget. The new report by CAP Senior Fellow and Harvard economist David Cutler, Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis, and Senior Research Associate Kristof Stremikis takes into account implications of important research not reflected in previous analyses and estimates that the health reform law will result in: - Total reductions in health care spending of $590 billion from 2010 to 2019 - Reduction in the annual growth rate in national health expenditures from 6.3 percent to 5.7 percent from 2010 to 2019 - Savings of nearly $2,000 on annual health care premiums for the typical family by 2019 - Deficit reduction of up to $400 billion over 10 years - Medicare savings of $524 billion The authors find that establishing new insurance market rules, health insurance exchanges, and innovative provider payment and delivery system reforms will result in substantial health system modernization and improved access to care for millions of previously uninsured and underinsured Americans. "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the most significant piece of health care cost-reducing legislation ever passed in the United States," said David Cutler, CAP Senior Fellow and Harvard economist. "It gives us the tools to improve the quality and lower the cost of medical care. Now we need to use those tools to make reform work." "With passage of the Affordable Care Act we have entered a new era in American health care-one in which all Americans will be able to get the care they need, and in which families will be protected from high health care costs," said Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis. "By changing the way we pay for and deliver care to reward high performance, we will begin to bend the health care cost curve, and all Americans will see real economic benefits." Source The Commonwealth Fund

How Health Care Reform Reduces the Deficit in 5 Not-So-Easy Steps Americans think the bill is too expensive because they don't understand its cost controls. It's hard to overstate how important the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—which makes the official judgments on how much bills cost and save—is in Washington. "I consider CBO God around here," Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, recently said. But that's a faith peculiar to Washington, D.C. The rest of the country doesn't know what the CBO is, and it doesn't care. "Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office," wrote the pollsters Doug Schoen and Scott Rasmussen in the Wall Street Journal, "but 81 percent of voters say it's likely [health care reform] will end up costing more than projected." That's left Democrats in a worst-of-both-worlds situation: They've built a bill that Washington's toughest scorekeeper says will cut the deficit by more than a trillion dollars over 20 years. They're getting attacked for the taxes and Medicare reforms that save all that money. But the country doesn't believe the savings are real. One of the problems Democrats have had is that it's very easy to understand the one thing the bill does to spend money—purchase insurance for people who can't afford it—and considerably harder to explain the many things it does to save money. Another is that a lot of the savings have to do with changing how medicine is practiced, which people are less familiar with than how insurance is purchased. But the fact that the cost controls are complicated and numerous doesn't mean they're absent, or that they won't work. Here's a guide to a few of the bill's best ideas, and how they work: Create a competitive insurance market: This is the bill's first, and most important, step. Right now, the insurance market's version of competition is pretty brutal. Companies compete to avoid the sickest people and sign up the healthiest people. Offering the best coverage for the lowest cost isn't much of a priority, because most consumers don't know whose coverage is best, and the ones who really do know are probably sick customers who spend their days researching this stuff. Outlawing the bad kind of competition while enabling the good kind, which the bill does, is more than just a humanitarian measure. It's a cost control. The insurance "exchanges" imitate the market in which federal employees (including congressmen) purchase their health care insurance. Participating insurers can't discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, they have to answer to regulators if they attempt to jack up premiums, and consumers will be able to rate their insurers, a rating that everyone else will see when shopping for their insurance. If all goes well, consumers will be able to log onto the exchange's Website, compare insurance plans, and choose their favorite. That means insurers will have to compete for customers. As any free-market conservative will tell you, that should drive prices down and quality up. If it doesn't, insurers will have some annoyed legislators to answer to: The bill says congressmen and their staff members need to buy their insurance from these exchanges, too. The Medicare Commission: The next cost control worth mentioning is an effort by Congress to solve the problem of, well, Congress. Medicare's cost problem is, in many ways, a political problem: Saving money means cutting someone's profits or someone's benefits, and politicians are afraid to do either. Enter the Independent Medicare Advisory Board. Modeled off of the highly-respected (but totally toothless) Medicare Payment and Advisory Commission, IMAC is a 15-person board of independent experts chosen by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and empowered to cut through congressional gridlock. IMAC will write reforms that bring Medicare into like with certain spending targets. Congress can't modify these proposals, it can't filibuster these proposals, and if it wants to reject them, it needs to find another way to save the same amount of money. Making the process of passing tough reforms easier is the single most important thing you can do to make sure tough reforms actually happen. A tax on "Cadillac plans": The least popular, but most direct, cost control is the tax on expensive, employer-provided coverage. Today, the average employer who offers insurance pays more than 70 percent of a worker's premiums, all of it tax-free. This amounts to an annual $250 billion subsidy for private insurance for people with good jobs. But it's not just the size of the subsidy; it's how we use it that matters. People have their employers pay for their health-care insurance, which means individuals don't know how much their insurance really costs and don't have as much incentive to keep those costs down. Imagine the pressure for cost control if the 70 percent that employers pay were coming out of our own pockets, instead of quietly coming out of our wages. In 2018, the proposed excise tax on so-called "Cadillac plans" slaps a 40 percent tax on every dollar spent on an insurance plan above $27,500 annually. So if your plan costs $27,600, the final $100 bucks would be taxed (technically, the insurer pays the tax, but it'll pass that onto your employer). But the idea isn't that people will pay this tax. It's that they, or their employers, evade it by choosing insurance that holds its costs down more aggressively. That gives insurers who hold costs down a competitive advantage against insurers who don't. because those who don't are not only more expensive, but also paying a hefty tax on their excess spending. Medicare "bundling" programs: The most obviously illogical part of our current health care system is that we pay doctors the way we pay car dealers: They get more money for every item they sell. But while we aren't afraid to ignore a car dealer's recommendations, we are afraid to disagree with our doctors. As you'd expect, this pushes costs higher. The health-care bill seeds Medicare with many experiments to change this status quo, the most immediately promising of which are the "bundling" programs. Instead of getting paid for everything they do to help a diabetic, hospitals will get paid once for treating that person's diabetes and all related conditions over a certain period of time. If this leads to lower costs and doesn't harm patients, it will be expanded. That would be the beginning of the end of paying for quantity of treatment, and the beginning of paying for quality of treatment. Changing the politics of reform: Republicans and Democrats both agree that we need more cost control in the health-care system. But politicians don't like to actually cut costs, because those votes reduce benefits and make people angry. So we've played a game in the past: We passively control costs by letting people become and stay uninsured, or by letting their insurance deteriorate and cover less, because those things don't require a vote in Congress. But because the individual mandate in the bill brings everyone into the insurance market and the subsidies for those who can't afford insurance on their own put Washington on the hook for costs, Congress will have to get serious about holding costs down in the system. The alternatives, for lawmakers, are high costs infuriating constituents who're being forced to buy something they can't afford, or yawning deficits forcing them to vote to take subsidies -- and thus health-care coverage -- away from people who currently have it. The days of letting inertia win the day and watching the system fall apart on its own are over. There's more, of course. Five is just a good round number. The bill's basic theory is to try pretty much everything in the hopes that some of it works out. The net effect is to make reform a continuous, rather than occasional, process, with different cost cops patrolling different beats. Insurers will have to work hard to stay a step ahead of the excise tax because employers won't want to buy plans that trigger it. The industries that provide medical care and technologies will have to hold their costs down because they don't want to become a target for the Medicare Commission. Hospitals will need to make sure they don't spend more than their competitors because they'll lose money under bundling. Until now, our health care system has had few internal cost controls and the comforting knowledge that Congress doesn't have the gumption to pass any. No longer. If the bill passes, it's change the health-care industry will have no choice but to believe in.

Most of his spending is on bush's policies and on mandated programs. Did you even look at the charts I posted - #853 on "bet your sorry you voted for obama" thread? Maybe it's too complicated for you to understand. I would be happy :thumbup: to explain it to you yet AGAIN.